Like a Dead Man Wears a Scar
by Avon
Summary: Rod and John and questions of guilt...


The pounding shook the flat and thumped straight through Rod Skase's aching head. He moaned and buried his face in his pillow. The assault on the door didn't stop, though, and he could hear shouting now.

"Open this bloody door, Rod, before I kick it in!"

Rod rolled over and scowled at the ceiling, contemplating leaving him to it. It was a security door so it'd take him a while and with any luck maybe a neighbour would call the police Rod almost smiled at the thought

_Oh, hell!_ By the sound of it, the madman was trying to do it! Rod struggled groggily to his feet.

"All right, I'm coming," he shouted.

Boulton pushed through the door as soon as it was opened. Rod looked down at him in exasperation as he stood there in classic Boulton confrontational pose - chin jutting forward, fists on hips. The whiplash of command was in his voice when he spoke.

"What the _hell_ do you think you've been doing, Rodney?"

"Piss off," said Rod, without much energy.

For answer Boulton slammed the door shut behind him and took a step closer.

"I fly back in this morning and when I get to work bloody Proctor is babbling about how you've resigned! Resigned! What the hell do you think you're playing at?"

Rod turned his face away from the inquisition and looked sullen.

"Ask Meadows."

"Oh, I have - dragged him out of some prayer meeting with Brownlow."

"Then you know."

"Yeah, I know that you stuffed up. You leant on an informant too heavily, backed the wrong horse. Made a prat of yourself, basically. So what?"

Rod looked at him for a moment then turned his back on him and walked away. Boulton followed, snapping, snarling and worrying away at his name. Still ignoring him, Rod put the kettle on and threw a teabag and some sugar into a mug. Boulton finally shut up and Rod glanced sideways at him. He was leaning against the kitchen bench looking hurt. Rod sighed, and with unnecessary force slapped another mug down on the work surface.

"Get the milk," he prodded, scrabbling in a drawer for some aspirin as Boulton moved away.

Rod took his cup of tea and sat down at the table. He drank some tea and rested his head in his hands, avoiding looking at Boulton. Pushing aside a couple of empty beer cans and a curry-encrusted takeaway containers Boulton put his tea on the table and sat down. He watched Rod in silence for a moment before returning to the attack.

"You look like crap, Rod. You think if you drink enough it'll disappear?"

Rod scowled at his tea and half-shrugged. There was silence for a minute and when Boulton spoke again the edge of challenge had disappeared from his voice and it was softer and broadly Scouse.

"It won't - and, Christ, I should know, Rod."

Boulton paused again and took a sip of the tea that until now had sat untasted on the table.

"Over at Romford, my second year in CID, the DS I was partnered with on a drugs raid got ki. .. killed."

Boulton stopped - struggling with something he seldom spoke of. Rod was all attention now, headache and tea both forgotten. Jim Carver had filled him in on the rumours and he vaguely remembered the headlines about a copper being killed at Romford, back when he'd been a probationary constable - but not even Kerry had ever had the brass front to ask Boulton.

Boulton looked up from his study of his mug of tea, but didn't meet Rod's eyes.

"It was my fault - I let some kid with a sob-story sucker me. He pulled a knife on Macca. I just about climbed into a bottle of Scotch. I dunno if I was looking for absolution or amnesia - but neither was in there. Keep trying to fix it with booze, Rod, and you'll wind up an old soak like Carver."

Rod grunted non-committaly but hearing Boulton expose himself like that did mean something. When he chose, the sergeant could enliven hours of a boring obbo with stories of stuff-ups and characters from previous nicks but generally he was very close-mouthed about anything in his past. Revisiting that had obviously hurt, too. Surreptitiously Rod watched Boulton, who was drinking his tea with fierce concentration. Suddenly Boulton looked up, catching him staring.

"Rod?"

"What?" Rod asked, cautiously.

"Why the hell did you resign? There would have been a disciplinary board but they wouldn't have thrown you out. Chucking it in just made you look guilty. God, if I didn't go when everybody thought I'd killed Anthony Payne"

"I did kill someone," Rod said quietly.

"That's a load of bull! You're not facing charges, are you, you prat?"

Rod shook his head.

"No."

He looked at Boulton, eyes bleak.

"How often do we have to let someone go - some bastard we know is guilty - because CPS says we haven't got enough evidence?"

"You heard the medical evidence, didn't you?" Boulton asked with anger-edged impatience. "Rigor had gone - the kid had been dead for hours. All you did was stuff up the finding of the body."

There was no answer from Rod and after a moment of waiting Boulton got to his feet. He leant over the table, hands spread in front of Rod and arms braced.

"So Meadows went for you - so what? We both know he's an old woman who wets himself anytime it looks like he might have to carry the bucket."

Rod turned his face away from the pugnacious one that hung inches in front of it. H e concentrated on tracing a curry stain on the table.

"I killed a kid," he said stubbornly.

With an exclamation of disgust Boulton moved back from the table, slamming his chair out of the way. Frustration boiled within him - nothing seemed to be getting through Rod's cocoon of guilt and Boulton never coped well with losing. At the kitchen door he stopped and looked back. He struggled to fit words to his fury.

"Fine! Give up, crawl into your bottle of Scotch, just run away from everything"

Rod sat unmoving as the tirade swirled around him. John smashed his hand into the door frame.

"You think your guilt is some sort of medal, don't you? Well, it isn't, Rod! You're parading around in it but it's like a dead man wearing a scar. It's totally bloody meaningless!" he spat. "Wear it, wallow in it - it won't change a single thing or bring that kid back!"

Boulton slammed his way down the hall and crashed the front door shut behind him. Rod still sat with his head bowed. He didn't move until after the angry steps had faded on the stairs and an engine roared below. Then Rod buried his face in his hands and stopped fighting the sobs that were tearing at his throat and chest.

Rod leant forward to check his hair in the mirror for the tenth time and fiddled with his tie. It seemed strange to be back in a suit and a tie after so many months in jeans or runners; his new boss liked her investigators to blend in. It wasn't the Police Service but after the first month or so he'd realised that he was enjoying it. Rod sighed. This was just putting off the inevitable. With a last smooth of his hair he opened the car door.

Once through the glass-doored entrance he stopped at the desk in the foyer to ask for directions. For once he didn't notice the woman behind the desk or think about her reaction to him.

Rod went slowly down a shadowed corridor with only the sound of his feet on the floor keeping him company. He stopped outside the heavy wooden doors for a moment, swallowing nervously, before going in.

Boulton was wearing a deep blue shirt - the one he'd known? He didn't recognise the ring though. Without knowing why he did it he touched Boulton's hand for a moment before quickly pulling away from the coldness to study him again.

It was Boulton's face all right - but it was no more Boulton between the walls of polished wood than it had been Rod's father when he'd stood and stared at him as a frightened ten year old. Freckles, normally unseen, stood out sharply on the cool pallor of Boulton's skin and his hair was brushed into a smooth sleekness that somehow made him look like a small boy. Rod swallowed hard and turned away. Arms folded and chin up - subconsciously echoing a Boulton pose when he refused to admit that something mattered - he looked, instead, at the flowers that lined the room. There was a set-piece from Brownlow and tulips and irises from CID. Some twit had sent a football-shaped arrangement and Rod smiled at the thought of Boulton's scorn if he could see it. Rod moved further along the display of flowers. A shiny-leafed wreath came from the canteen ladies - oddly enough they'd always liked him. Rod smiled again, remembering Danny whinging once about the extra chips Boulton always got and the way the canteen ladies would remember how he liked his sandwiches - and Liz Rawton's crisp-voiced rejoinder; "Have you seen his smile?"

A mass of dark red roses bore his brother's name, but Duncan had said that he wouldn't be over for the funeral. A few steps further on a showy wreath of white lilies were signed 'To our darling John, with all our love, Dad and Mum.' He didn't even want _all_ of your love - just half of it, Rod thought as he fingered the gilt- and guilt-edged card. He stepped back a little, surveying the bank of flowers. He hadn't brought any, picturing what Boulton would have said, but the room was rich with scents and colours. It seemed that the half of the population who didn't kill coppers sent flowers when someone else did. Rod wondered which, if any, of the many tributes came from the girlfriend Boulton had hinted at the last couple of times they met. Was it the small bunch of violets that somehow looked hand-picked? The couple of sunflowers with their stems loosely bound together with a deep blue ribbon? Perhaps he should have brought sunflowers. Boulton had told him once that he'd always wanted to grow a sunflower - joking about how they were a Jack-in-the-Beanstalk kind of plant. Days later, passing a junk shop Rod had been unable to resist the tacky dancing sunflower sitting in the front tray. Boulton had roared with laughter then plonked it on his desk beside the telephone where its movement receptors soon gave up the uneven struggle. The new bloke would probably bin it, Rod supposed.

Boulton had been very cagey about this girlfriend. He'd dropped only the vaguest of hints and had buttoned up when Rod questioned him. There had been something in his grin though that had convinced Rod that the girlfriend existed - and mattered.

Rod put down the Barton Street wreath he'd been staring at unseeingly and turned back to face the coffin. God knew why he had come after his father he had sworn never again.

Three reluctant steps and Rod was back beside the casket, looking down again at the body that used to be his sergeant. He shook his head. It was so much bull that they looked like they were sleeping. They didn't even look real; they looked as though they had all the soft fragility of something carved out of marzipan paste - and could be crumpled at a touch. The strangest thing was to see John Boulton still. He was never still. Usually he was rushing into action - barrelling through the CID door, clattering up and down the stairs, running down a suspect or jockeying a snout into a corner before breathing threats into his ear. Trapped at his desk with paperwork he sharpened pencils, kicked a desk leg to the - generally unspoken - annoyance of the rest of the office or slid around on his chair. Stuck in a car on an obbo he fidgeted and played with the radio. Now, for the first time, Rod saw him still. They'd tidied him up as best as they could but some marks of the fight which had ended his life were still visible - the faintest shade of a bruise on his cheek, a graze on his chin - dusted with makeup but still visible - and a small cut near his hairline that would never heal. Rod touched it very gently.

_"like a dead man wears a scar..."_

The words echoed and burnt through his memory. He'd learnt to live with his guilt but Boulton would never know this scar.


End file.
